Prominent Business Authors Share Words Of Wisdom With Students at BIMTECH’s Business Literature Festival
Greater Noida, February 5: On Friday, the Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) Greater Noida & Penguin Random House India organized a one-day Business Literature Festival (virtually) to celebrate and foster the culture of reading, writing and publishing of business literature.
As a part of the festival, BIMTECH hosted several candid conversations with prominent authors and informative masterclasses on a variety of topics such as brand leadership and blogging.
The fest was joined by eminent authors from the industry and academia including Professor Debashis Chatterjee, Director of IIM Kozhikode and author of ‘Karma Sutras: Leadership & Wisdom in Uncertain times’; Samir Soni, Actor, Director and author of ‘My Experiments with Silence: The Diary of an Introvert’; and Harish Damodaran, author of ‘Broke to Breakthrough: The rise of India’s largest private dairy company’.
In his inaugural address as the chief guest, Professor Debashish Chatterjee shared some unique insights on his book ‘Karma Sutras- Leadership & Wisdom in Uncertain Times’.
He said, “Karma Sutra is about decoding habits and exploring potential. It’s not about fate. Conventionally karma has been called fate by our huge civilization that thrives on the bovine as well as the divine.”
“Karma fundamentally is context. Karma is a pattern of thoughts & actions blended together in the past that impacts our behaviour, thoughts & actions in the future.” Chatterjee added.
When asked about the specific reason for naming the book as Karma Sutra, Debashish Chatterjee said, “The first part of the book is Karma which is much maligned and misinterpreted; it relates to work or action.”
“Karma for me translates as context rejection pleasure. I’m defining the context in the first part of the book, the context you find yourself in the business, academic challenges you face, that is the karma part. That has happened because of the way you thought about these things in the past.”
“Karma is the context in which you have acted in the past & sutras are insights that you get out of it through which you can solve problems that you have now created yourself.” said Chatterjee.
He also talked about his insight from the book about the first law of leadership, ‘clarity’, he said like charity, clarity has to begin at home which is your own body.
“Leadership is the ability to get out of the ‘I am the body idea’ to ‘I am the spirit idea.’ The very core of leadership is influence and that comes not from the physical but from something that is happening within the body. Clarity comes not from the clutter of Information, but from the austerity of thought. It comes less through information base & more through insight,” he said.
Earlier in his welcome address, explaining about how the idea of BIMTECH Business Literature Festival emerged, BIMTECH Director Dr. H. Chaturvedi said, “This idea came in our mind in around 2009-10 that we should have the first B-School Business Literature Festival at BIMTECH, we planned it but we couldn’t organise it in 2010 and then last year only it was fortified.”
“One thing we want to cultivate in the young minds is that if you want to become big in your life, in your career, you need to become book readers. Some of the very prominent CEOs in the world and in India have a common habit of reading & writing books.” Dr. Chaturvedi added.
The inaugural session of BIMTECH’s Business Literature Festival 2022 was followed by insightful conversations with authors about their books and panel discussions on topics such as ‘Entrepreneurship & Innovation’, ‘Renaissance of Liberal Arts Education In Indian Bschools’ and ‘Women Authorship’.
